Ability Sequence

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If you play Teemo, you're an a**hole. The champion is an a**hole, and so are you for playing him. To play Teemo properly, you need to embrace it and be the biggest a**hole you can be. The enemy top laner should not be allowed to play League of Legends when they're facing your Teemo. Playing a melee top laner against Teemo is borderline unwinnable and extremely hard to even survive while getting any decent amount of CS, and you'll want to take full advantage of that fact, and then refuse to stop pushing top lane so they're never able to get out of laning against you. Because you're an a**hole.

I hope you enjoy reading the guide as much as I enjoyed writing it, and most importantly, that you take everything you can from it! And if you do enjoy it, upvotes are very much appreciated!

If you like Teemo and would enjoy talking about him, come participate in /r/TeemoTalk on Reddit!

Sorcery & Domination

Summon Aery

Summon Aery: As Teemo you can easily proc this very easily in lane, and Toxic Shot's poison lasts so long that you'll often proc it twice from just one auto-attack. It can also apply globally from Noxious Trap.

The Ultimate Hat

The Ultimate Hat: Teemo can stack this up very quickly and the CDR is very good for your ultimate, which you want to place in as many spots as possible.

Celerity

Celerity: Move Quick gives you a lot of movement speed to convert into AP, and the movement speed it itself gives you is very useful.

Taste of Blood: This is just a nice addition to your sustain to help ensure that you're always coming out on top of trades.

Ravenous Hunter: This actually synergizes super well with Teemo not only because Blinding Dart is single-target, but because it treats Toxic Shot as a spell, giving you a lot of non-stop healing. It's hard to notice in-game since it's over time, but it adds up real quick, especially as it applies to minions too.

This is the best summoner spell in the game, almost every champion takes it and it's completely irreplaceable. It's the best defensive summoner and the best offensive summoner all at once. The fact that you see all 10 players take this in 99% of games just goes to show how strong it is. Teemo is of course no exception to this.

Teleport is the standard summoner for top lane, but you're an a**hole so you're going to take Ignite. Ignite is actually optimal for Teemo because he plays solely for lane, and Ignite gives him kill potential and makes him impossibly hard to 1v1 on top of his already great kit for dueling top laners.

If you somehow find yourself in what turns out to be a pretty bad matchup, Teleport becomes viable to survive the lane more easily. Examples of who you might want to consider taking this against are Pantheon and Heimerdinger.

-Skill Order-

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Passive: Guerrilla Warfare

Guerrilla Warfare: Not terribly useful in straight up 1v1 situations, but it does have some uses, such as making incredible jukes while in brushes. You can also set yourself up for an ambush, especially if you can place a Noxious Trap somewhere you think the enemy is likely to step on. You'll have to use a lot of creativity to use this passive well.

Q: Blinding Dart

Blinding Dart: It's thanks to this that Teemo is such a pain in the *** to deal with for many top laners who usually excel at 1v1s. If you're using this to poke make sure you're not in a position where you can be easily all-in'd afterwards, since this is a very crucial skill to have up in all-ins in most matchups.

W: Move Quick

Move Quick: Not the flashiest spell in the world, but it's pretty useful for Teemo's kit. It gives him enough mobility to easily escape ganks and being collapsed on while split pushing, and in laning phase it's super useful for getting in range to land more harass on enemies.

E: Toxic Shot

Toxic Shot: This adds a lot of strength to Teemo's auto-attack poke early on, a huge part of what makes him such a strong lane bully. As you gain levels and items it does a lot of damage, giving you huge DPS especially when combined with Nashor's Tooth. It's also super useful for waveclearing, since if you auto-attack each minion of a wave once you'll get a lot of DoT damage onto each minion that speeds up the waveclearing process combined to just auto-attacking each minion down one-by-one on any other champion.

R: Noxious Trap

Noxious Trap: These act as free mini-wards and are just a massive nuisance to the enemy team, especially when you scatter them throughout their jungle. In lane you should start placing them behind you and in places where it will massively screw over the enemy top laner if they try and engage on you, then start placing them around the river and enemy jungle entrance to both grant vision and slow the enemy jungler down while they try and gank. Try to avoid placing the traps right next to each other when possible since enemies will frequently explode two at the same time, and the damage doesn't stack.

Doran's Ring

Doran's Ring: Your abilities all have have AP ratios and the mana regen ensures you can spam Blinding Dart as much as you need to, making it the optimal starting item for Teemo.

Hextech Gunblade

Hextech Gunblade: This'll be your go-to starting item against squishy laners, since it adds a ton of burst and kill potential that Teemo's kit otherwise lacks. Every single stat it gives is very useful for Teemo.

Liandry's Torment

Liandry's Torment: An absolute core item on Teemo thanks to its amazing synergy with Noxious Trap. When laning vs tanks you'll want to rush it in lane since it does damage based off of current health, which is always going to be higher vs tanks than vs squishy champions. If you rush this, you should omit Hextech Gunblade from your build and move on with the rest of your items, since Hextech Gunblade's base damage tends to fall off quickly if you're building it any later than as a first item.

Nashor's Tooth

Nashor's Tooth: This is an amazing item for Teemo since on top of giving him the AP and CDR stats that an AP champion needs, it also gives him a lot of attack speed which has great synergy with Toxic Shot and greatly increases his DPS.

Void Staff

Void Staff: At this stage of the game a lot of champions have usually built some form of MR or at the very least naturally received a decent amount of MR through levels, causing Void Staff's % penetration to come in handy, and making it a cheap power spike.

Rabadon's Deathcap

Rabadon's Deathcap: This is a great item to round up your build with. It's an amazing late-game item since it multiplies your current AP and at this stage you'll have 4 items worth of AP, making it extremely efficient.

Lich Bane: This is an alternative to Hextech Gunblade when you're going for the anti-tank build. Hextech Gunblade falls off over time since the base damage barely increases and the AP ratio is only 30%, but Lich Bane has a 50% AP ratio and has the advantage of being extremely spammable rather than being on a 45 second cooldown. You should build this after Void Staff.

Early Game

At level 1 whether you start Toxic Shot or Blinding Dart depends entirely on who your lane opponent is and what's more effective against them. Blinding Dart is best for very short trades where you might not get many windows to play aggressively, while Toxic Shot is best in matchups where you can easily harass with auto-attacks repeatedly. In almost all ranged matchups you'll want to start Blinding Dart, while most melee matchups, especially vs tanks, will benefit from Toxic Shot start.

Regardless of which you start with you'll want to constantly poke your lane opponent since there's virtually no one that can win trades against Teemo early on. Try not to push too hard so you don't end up at the enemy tower in an easily gankable position, but at the same time try not to get pushed in either since you want to be able to hit level 2 before your opponent so you remain stronger than them.

At level 2 take whichever spell you didn't take at level 1, and at level 3 take Move Quick since it helps you escape ganks, kite, and aggressively chase enemies for kills or more harass.

Nothing really changes about your playing pattern throughout the entire laning phase, any changes are adaptations you'll have to make depending on who you're laning against and what their champion is capable of.

After level 6 you should place a few Noxious Traps in lane in places where it's very hard for minions to activate and where they would easily protect you during ganks or if the enemy laner tries to all-in you. Once you have a few down you should starting moving them into the river in order to act as small wards and to slow the enemy jungler down while he tries to gank before he's even arrived into the lane.

Teemo's team-fighting is not very good, so you should avoid it whenever possible. If your lane opponent is someone you can easily beat even late-game then you should stay top lane trying to push down towers, using Noxious Traps to keep yourself safe from getting collapsed on, and also placing them in the enemy jungle whenever it's safe to do so.

After you've taken the 2nd top turret though there's not much else you can do. You can't split push bot lane because without TP that's basically giving away a free baron, and taking the inhibitor turret is hard unless your lane opponent just leaves the lane. At that point you'll be forced to group with your team.

When grouping with your team you'll want to think ahead to what are the objectives that both teams will aim to contest in the near future. Teemo isn't good at straight up team-fighting but he's amazing at fighting in pre-determined locations where he has time set up a bunch of Noxious Traps. So for example if Dragon is 2 minutes away from spawning, you'd start placing a ton of shrooms around the general dragon area and entrances to the river from the enemy team's side, making it so they have to step into a shroom minefield if they want to contest the objective; when in reality it'll be borderline impossible and an easy team-fight win for your team.

In team-fights you should aim to DPS down the enemy tanks ( Nashor's Tooth comes in handy here), dropping Noxious Trap near enemies where they're likely to explode and do damage since they're a massive nuke and constantly proc Liandry's Torment to help burn down tanks, as well as greatly reducing their mobility.

If a squishy enemy ever gets in range of you you can always try to blow them up with Hextech Gunblade (replaced with Lich Bane in some cases) -> Blinding Dart -> auto-attacks, which even though it will rarely 1-shot anyone unless you're really fed, will easily take off a large chunk of their HP bar and will kill them if any of your other team-mates focus them as well.